As a law student at the University of British Columbia, Paul Côté joined with John Ekels and Dave Miller in 1969 to compete internationally in sailing’s Soling Class. Together they were selected to represent Canada at the 1972 Summer Olympics by winning all eight of the races at the national trials and, at the Games, they captured a bronze medal behind the Americans and the Swedes. The trio then won the 1973 North American Championships before splitting up due to Miller’s retirement from active competition. The Olympics were Côté’s only major international medal, but he is better known by environmentalists for a different achievement. In 1970 he was one of a handful of activists who formed the Don’t Make A Wave Committee to protest (and stop) the detonation of nuclear weapons in Alaska. He did not join the protest vessel on its journey, as he was training for the Olympics, but he is nonetheless considered by some to be one of the founders of the organization that followed, the Greenpeace Foundation. Côté earned a law degree from the University of British Columbia, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi, and later worked in business, starting several successful ventures in Canada and the United States, including Genstar and the Newland Group. He was inducted, along with the other members of his bronze medal-winning team, into the British Columbia Sports Hall of Fame in 1989.
Canada